Post by Catsmate on Mar 25, 2015 13:23:05 GMT
It's gone quiet here, too quiet... So for your delectation I present;
The Strangest Shop in London.
It was a small place, and could be found at 7 West Hill, Wandsworth. Hardly a fashionable part of London, but it suited the peculiar man who did business there, and the odd business and clientèle he attracted. It was closed Monday to Friday, but on Saturday afternoon it was busy as it's owner waited for people to bring him objects they'd found.
His name was George Fabian Lawrence, but to hundreds, even thousands of Londoners, he was known as 'Stoney Jack'.
Born in 1862 he was the son of a pawnbroker, and worked as one himself, until he found a related but odder line of business. He was described by one friend as a "genial frog" of a man; small, pouched and wheezy, but permanently smiling and good natured, and with the habit of puffing out his cheeks when he talked.
He was "....the bloke at Wandsworth who buys old stones and bits of pottery...he's a good sport. If you dig up an old pot or a coin and take it to him he'll tell you what it is and buy it off you".
Starting in the 1880s, but really getting going around 1890 when the rebuilding of London began in earnest, he put out the word that he was interested in stuff unearthed by the new construction going on. He contacted the navvies (labourers who did the digging for the new foundations) and mudlarks (those who scoured the Thames at low tide) and offered to buy whatever they'd bring him. No questions asked.
Of course even in those less regulated days the business was mostly illegal; found objects belonged the the landowner or the Crown. But numerous museums and collections (among them the Guildhall Museum, the London Museum, the Victorian & Albert, even the British Museum), were happy to do business with Lawrence for 'objects of interest'. It can also be argued that his system prevented proper, controlled, excavations of archaeological sites that might have unearthed much more. But it's more likely that such finds would have simply been dumped, so it's just as reasonable to accept that he was the right man in the right place to save a good deal of London’s heritage.
The Cheapside Horde.
Lawrence's greatest find is what's now called the Cheapside horde. It was brought to him (allegedly, he was discreet on dates) on the evening of Saturday 18 June 1912 and had probably been found on the corner of Friday Street and Cheapside, a district that had long been associated with the jewellery trade.
Tipping open a sack, two men revealed an enormous lump of clay resembling (according to one witness) 'an iron football'. Lawrence paid the men and took the ball of hardened clay and soaked it in water.
Out fell pearl earrings, pendants and all sorts of jewellery, many of the pieces crushed or damaged.
The discovery caused immense interest; the Museum of London convened an extraordinary meeting of the trustees. A week later they inspected the treasure, consisting of over four hundred pieces, including carved Colombian emeralds (one of which was hollowed out to contain a pocket watch), Brazilian topaz and amazonite, Indian diamonds, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, Burmese rubies, gold broaches and chains, enamel and gold perfume bottles, cameos and much more.
Lawrence continued in business at the same address until 1939, his methods increasingly considered dubious by the archaeological establishment. He often acted as both seller and buyer (he was a salaried official of a couple of museums) and sometimes authenticator too. But he was a generous man, who paid for anything brought to him, and fostered an interest in the past and especially the history of London, in those who visited his shop. And he died leaving an estate of around a thousand pounds, not the sign of a man overly interested in profit.
Stoney Jack died of a heart attack failure in 1939; he'd probably hate to have seen what the war did to London.
Of him Sir Mortimer Wheeler, keeper of the Museum of London, said;
Game uses.
Well he owns a shop filled with oddities unearthed around London, has a mass of contacts around London, and deals in odd finds. He's the perfect person to acquire the campaign's MacGuffin; a Terileptil power pack, a psionic crystal souvenir or whatever. Be it trivial or universe shattering if it might be found in London it could end up in Lawrence's shop.
He could also facilitate a group who wanted access to a particular site, an assurance from him would work wonders with the workmen. Or act as a conduit for information or rumours.
Henry Vollam Morton was a friend of Lawrence's and an interesting character is his own right; a journalist and travel writer who was present for the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun and travelled extensively in the Pulp era.
His newspaper columns on London life were very popular and he was an expert on the city, a useful contact for a scenario or campaign set there. He wrote a number of books on London, and was also one of the first to write about motoring in England, his book In Search of England was a bestseller.
Both he and Lawrence also fit perfectly into a UK based Call of Cthulhu game.
In my own game the pair, along with people Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard and Percy Fawcett appear as background; sources of information and nudges to the players when needed. They're loosely associated with the Hourglass Club.
Comments? Questions? Ideas?
The Strangest Shop in London.
[It was] perhaps the strangest shop in London. The shop sign over the door is a weather-worn Ka-figure from an Egyptian tomb, now split and worn by the winds of nearly forty winters. The windows are full of an astonishing jumble of objects. Every historic period rubs shoulders in them. Ancient Egyptian bowls lie next to Japanese sword guards and Elizabethan pots contain Saxon brooches, flint arrowheads or Roman coins…
There are lengths of mummy cloth, blue mummy beads, a perfectly preserved Roman leather sandal found twenty feet beneath a London pavement, and a shrunken black object like a bird’s claw that is a mummified hand… all the objects are genuine and priced at a few shillings each.
[H. V. Morton, 1928]
There are lengths of mummy cloth, blue mummy beads, a perfectly preserved Roman leather sandal found twenty feet beneath a London pavement, and a shrunken black object like a bird’s claw that is a mummified hand… all the objects are genuine and priced at a few shillings each.
[H. V. Morton, 1928]
His name was George Fabian Lawrence, but to hundreds, even thousands of Londoners, he was known as 'Stoney Jack'.
Born in 1862 he was the son of a pawnbroker, and worked as one himself, until he found a related but odder line of business. He was described by one friend as a "genial frog" of a man; small, pouched and wheezy, but permanently smiling and good natured, and with the habit of puffing out his cheeks when he talked.
He was "....the bloke at Wandsworth who buys old stones and bits of pottery...he's a good sport. If you dig up an old pot or a coin and take it to him he'll tell you what it is and buy it off you".
Starting in the 1880s, but really getting going around 1890 when the rebuilding of London began in earnest, he put out the word that he was interested in stuff unearthed by the new construction going on. He contacted the navvies (labourers who did the digging for the new foundations) and mudlarks (those who scoured the Thames at low tide) and offered to buy whatever they'd bring him. No questions asked.
- London, like most cities, is built on, well, London. Modern on post-War, on inter-War, on Victorian/Edwardian, on Georgian, Elizabethan, medieval, Saxon, Roman and even older.
- Starting in the 1890s the city was redeveloped at a rate unseen since the rebuilding after the fire of 1666. The new, taller buildings needed deeper foundations, hence the digging.
Of course even in those less regulated days the business was mostly illegal; found objects belonged the the landowner or the Crown. But numerous museums and collections (among them the Guildhall Museum, the London Museum, the Victorian & Albert, even the British Museum), were happy to do business with Lawrence for 'objects of interest'. It can also be argued that his system prevented proper, controlled, excavations of archaeological sites that might have unearthed much more. But it's more likely that such finds would have simply been dumped, so it's just as reasonable to accept that he was the right man in the right place to save a good deal of London’s heritage.
The Cheapside Horde.
Lawrence's greatest find is what's now called the Cheapside horde. It was brought to him (allegedly, he was discreet on dates) on the evening of Saturday 18 June 1912 and had probably been found on the corner of Friday Street and Cheapside, a district that had long been associated with the jewellery trade.
Tipping open a sack, two men revealed an enormous lump of clay resembling (according to one witness) 'an iron football'. Lawrence paid the men and took the ball of hardened clay and soaked it in water.
Out fell pearl earrings, pendants and all sorts of jewellery, many of the pieces crushed or damaged.
The discovery caused immense interest; the Museum of London convened an extraordinary meeting of the trustees. A week later they inspected the treasure, consisting of over four hundred pieces, including carved Colombian emeralds (one of which was hollowed out to contain a pocket watch), Brazilian topaz and amazonite, Indian diamonds, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, Burmese rubies, gold broaches and chains, enamel and gold perfume bottles, cameos and much more.
- The horde is generally believed to be the stock of a jeweller/goldsmith who hid it during the English Ciil War, around
Lawrence continued in business at the same address until 1939, his methods increasingly considered dubious by the archaeological establishment. He often acted as both seller and buyer (he was a salaried official of a couple of museums) and sometimes authenticator too. But he was a generous man, who paid for anything brought to him, and fostered an interest in the past and especially the history of London, in those who visited his shop. And he died leaving an estate of around a thousand pounds, not the sign of a man overly interested in profit.
Stoney Jack died of a heart attack failure in 1939; he'd probably hate to have seen what the war did to London.
Of him Sir Mortimer Wheeler, keeper of the Museum of London, said;
...not a tithe of the objects found during building or dredging operations in the neighborhood of London during the last forty years would have been saved to knowledge. If on occasion a remote landowner may, in the process, theoretically have lost some trifle that was his just due, a higher justice may reasonably recognize that… the representative and, indeed, important prehistoric, Roman, Saxon and medieval collections of the Museum are largely founded upon this work of skillful salvage.
Game uses.
Well he owns a shop filled with oddities unearthed around London, has a mass of contacts around London, and deals in odd finds. He's the perfect person to acquire the campaign's MacGuffin; a Terileptil power pack, a psionic crystal souvenir or whatever. Be it trivial or universe shattering if it might be found in London it could end up in Lawrence's shop.
He could also facilitate a group who wanted access to a particular site, an assurance from him would work wonders with the workmen. Or act as a conduit for information or rumours.
Henry Vollam Morton was a friend of Lawrence's and an interesting character is his own right; a journalist and travel writer who was present for the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun and travelled extensively in the Pulp era.
His newspaper columns on London life were very popular and he was an expert on the city, a useful contact for a scenario or campaign set there. He wrote a number of books on London, and was also one of the first to write about motoring in England, his book In Search of England was a bestseller.
Both he and Lawrence also fit perfectly into a UK based Call of Cthulhu game.
In my own game the pair, along with people Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard and Percy Fawcett appear as background; sources of information and nudges to the players when needed. They're loosely associated with the Hourglass Club.
Comments? Questions? Ideas?
I've started perusing my copy since arriving back. 
but they do include the Blind Man of St. Martins 
.
